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Malazan Wiki talk:Manual of Style
Please discuss ideas or proposals for changes to the Manual of Style here: Tense The tenses writers use in this wiki are by no means consistent. The style guide says to use past tense generally and present perfect progressive for when characters recall events. There are a few problems with this: 1) In literature criticism, it is appropriate to write about the events in a book in present tense, since all a writer needs to do is turn to a page and read that the character is doing something. This is true for all books, including those (most, to be honest) books written in the past tense. 2) Even if we consider ourselves as historians who chronicle past events (which I think has its own problems, particulary because MBotF is a work of fiction and is by no means an accurate recounting of events, given the multitude of voices in the story), then everything must be in past tense, including recalled events, because all events happened in the past. 3) Using present perfect progressive is awkward at best and downright horrific to read at worst: articles seem like they are written by someone for whom English is their second (or third...) language. See the Night of Knives page as a prime example, which is the example given in the style guide. The fourth sentence in the NoK ("As he had been watching, he had remembered") is awkward. Consider, instead, "As he watched, he remembered..." It reads easier and uses fewer words, which is the goal of good writing. None of this is meant to demean those persons who have put blood, sweat, and possibly tears (I cried at the end of tCG; who didn't?) into writing these articles. I envy those who enjoy writing. I, however, enjoy editing; improving language is my hobby and passion. At the very least, we need to be consistent. My proposed changes are: 1) Change the general rule to present tense, per standards of writing about literature. This also means treating the Malazan world as a work of fiction, rather than history. 2) If not present tense, then past tense generally. I understand the desire to treat the Malazan world as (alternate) history. 3) Abolish the present perfect progressive rule altogether. I hope this leads to discussion. Thanks, everyone. Dingleberryoflove (talk) 16:07, September 13, 2017 (UTC) :Thanks for your thoughts. Just to be clear, virtually every article on the site is written in past tense. If it is a person, place, or thing within the Malazan novels it gets a write-up as if it came out of a history book. I just flipped through a few history books on my shelf and they are all written that way. There's no literary criticism here so I don't think that comparison applies. And although the events depicted in the novels may or may not be accurate recounts, neither are history books really. They're similarly accounts of multiple sources distilled and filtered into a central narrative by an author. :I can think of only two places where other tenses generally come into play on the Wiki and these are relatively few in number: :1. Real-world topics such as the articles on the authors (Steven Erikson is the author of...etc) or on the actual books (Gardens of the Moon is the first in a series of novels...etc) :2. Detailed Book/Chapter Summaries - I assume these are in present tense because it's more natural for in the moment story-telling vs. historical overviews. The chapter summaries on the Tor Re-read page are also written in the present tense. :I not sure what to say in regards to the past perfect progressive tense, since I had to look up its definition just to get an idea of what it was. I can't say if I have used this tense in my own chapter summaries. Can you flesh out the example you started ("As he watched, he remembered...") to complete the whole first paragraph in the NoK entry, keeping in mind that Temper is recalling watching past events?--ArchieVist (talk) 21:40, September 13, 2017 (UTC) :::I think to say that "virtually every article is written in the past tense" is inaccurate, based on what I've read. Certainly, the tense used is predominantly past tense, but I have run across plenty articles written in present tense. For example, compare the Chapter 1 summaries of Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard. :::The reference to literary criticism is broad: I simply mean that when critics (or any person who writes about books) write about fiction, they write about the events in the present tense. For example, please see the Synopsis section of the Wikipedia page for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , arguably one of the best novels written in English. Though the events of the book are written in past tense, when talking about the events that occur in the book, present tense is standard. Assuming we treat the Malazan world as fictional books, then using the present tense is appropriate. :::However, if we assume that the Malazan books are a (alternate) history, then the past tense throughtout is appropriate. Below are two examples of edits (per your request; taken from Night of Knives/Chapter 1); the first is for present tense (with past tense for remembered events preceding the current present), and the second is for past tense: :::: Original) Temper is standing watch on the walls of Mock's Hold. As he watches the approach of a message cutter, he reflects on the arrival of a Malazan man-of-war three days earlier. With hundreds of others, he had observed the Imperial official disembark. As he had been watching, he had remembered his own time aboard such imperial vessels. He had then seen cloaked figures exiting the ship who seemed all too familiar and had wondered if they were from Unta and possibly after him. ::: 1) Temper stands watch on the walls of Mock's Hold. As he watches the approach of a message cutter, he reflects on the arrival of a Malazan man-of-war three days earlier when he had observed the Imperial official disembark with hundreds of others. As he watched the man-of-war and remembered his own time aboard imperial vessels, he saw cloaked figures exiting the ship who seemed all too familiar and wondered if they were from Unta and possibly after him. 2) Temper stood watch on the walls of Mock's Hold. As he watched the approach of a message cutter, he reflected on the arrival of a Malazan man-of-war three days earlier when he had observed the Imperial official disembark with hundreds of others. As he watched the man-of-war and remembered his own time aboard imperial vessels, he saw cloaked figures exiting the ship who seemed all too familiar and wondered if they were from Unta and possibly after him. The differences may seem minor. I also understand I may be belaboring the point. However, if we're going for a straighforward, factual style in this wiki, then we should use simpler tenses. If we're writing about characters recalling past events, it is better to use prepositional phrases such as "As he watched" or references to time passing such as "three days earlier." Erikson is obsessed with time (how can an archaeologist/anthropologist not be?), and so using temporal prepositions and measurements of time seems appropriate. All this being said, I acknowledge it may be better to keep things simple, or at least not create a ton of editing work (though I am up to the task), and so sticking with past tense may be the best option. Certainly abandoning present (or past) perfect progressive should be done. Dingleberryoflove (talk) 18:57, September 14, 2017 (UTC) :I'm not following the confusion on the present vs. past tense on the articles. Yes, all of the chapter summaries are written in present tense. That accounts for around 432 articles out of the total 4,851 on the site (many of which have not yet been written). Throw in another 32 for the author pages, book pages, novella pages, and the single short story page and that's still only around 10% of the articles on the site. The other person, place, or thing articles are all in past tense.--ArchieVist (talk) 01:36, September 15, 2017 (UTC) ::Hi Dingleberryoflove. ::I wrote the above sample of Temper recollecting the arrival of the cutter and used different tenses to reflect the complicated timeline occurring within the article itself. The baseline for the summary overall is still present tense, the same as for all other chapter summaries. I agree with you that we should keep the tenses simple where possible, however, in this specific case, if you look at the history of that section, you will see why I felt the need to deviate from simple to differentiate between current and past events. Over and above all grammatical considerations must stand our objective to reflect as accurately as possible the content of the books. In some cases, simple might lead to confusion (as it had done in this case) so something more complicated is required. Exceptions prove the rule as they say ;) ::There may still exist the odd article written before overall standards were set in place and I am sure that there are instances where editors simply used the wrong tense in error rather that intentionally - feel free to make corrections where required. ::Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 10:50, September 25, 2017 (UTC)